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I love you. You’re fired.
Only once in my working life have I heard “I love you” from a CEO. It was during a retreat for a leadership team of about 50 highly mission-driven people. Together, we led tens of thousands of employees and were accountable for tens of billions of dollars.
“I love you” from the leader felt remarkable in the moment. It felt disconcerting too.
My family doesn’t often say I love you. We focus more on showing one another love by little and sometimes super-sized things we do for one another. While I’m a huge hugger and adore both gift-giving and figuring out what I can do to serve others, my family-of-origin legacy carries with me: I have to remind myself to actually speak the words “I love you” out loud.
Within a week of the I-love-you retreat several leadership team colleagues were fired. The irony was not lost on me; a leader’s love, it seemed, could be short-lived.
Perhaps its doubly ironic, given the retreat story and my family-of-origin context, that today I’m advising you to learn—and use—love language with employees to become a more engaging leader. Stick with me for a few more minutes, I’ll explain.
Employee Engagement
It’s no secret that according to Gallup Research employee engagement is abysmally low. “ Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work,” Gallup reported in 2014. For the U.S., Gallup consistently reports that about 70% of employees are disengaged , although the percentage of U.S. workers engaged in their jobs rose from an average 31.7% in January to an average 32.9% in February 2015.
The intent of Gallup’s research-driven theory about employee engagement is positively impacting the bottom-line. Employee engagement is considered a key indicator of business success.
Gallup measures
engagement with questions
about using one’s strengths. Chief Workplace Management Scientist at Gallup, Jim Harter, Ph.D.,
explains that
“employees are most likely to be engaged—and stay with their companies—when they report that their managers
understand them
and
give them the chance to do what they do best every day
.”
Something Missing
Full disclosure: I’m a Gallup fan. I was fortunate to go through Gallup’s Great Leaders program. As an organizational leader and now as a leadership consultant, I have used Gallup instruments/tools for about 15 years.
My I-love-you-you’re-fired story comes from a mega workforce that used Gallup’s measures to annually assess how well we were doing both collectively and as individual leaders. Ever since that I-love-you-you’re-fired experience, I’ve had a nagging feeling that something is missing from employee engagement research, tools and reports. I believe the missing piece is meaningful love.
Meaningful Love
In 2010, the Fetzer Institute benchmarked Americans’ attitudes on love. In its Survey of Love and Forgiveness in American Society , people were asked about “meaningful love” defined in a manner that sounds a lot like a leadership job description (should): being compassionate, helping others, sacrifices, acts of kindness, anticipating needs, respect, spending time, and community involvement .
Fetzer’s findings illustrate how hungry Americans are for meaningful love:
- An overwhelming 95% of Americans responded that more meaningful love is needed in the world
- 94% of the general population surveyed recognized that more meaningful love is needed here in America
- 89% agreed that more love is needed in U.S. communities
- 77% of Americans said that they need more meaningful love in the industry or field in which they work
Mother Teresa said, “hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than hunger for bread.” As leaders, we can start removing that hunger when we learn what Dr. Gary Chapman calls love languages : words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch.
To Engage, Know the Love Language That Works Best
If you’re not familiar with Dr. Chapman, he hosts two nationally syndicated radio programs that air on more than 400 stations. His first book,
The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
, is a continual
New York Times
bestseller that millions of readers credit with saving their marriages by showing them simple and practical ways to communicate love. (
Click here to learn more about Dr. Chapman
.)
Why turn to a marriage expert for help with employee engagement?
I could give you logical rationale about how we spend more time with people at work than other people in our lives.
Maybe if I call you a failure at employee engagement repeatedly—like Gallup essentially does—you’ll be desperate enough to take this love language advice from Dr. Chapman (and me).
I’m confident that I can construct an undeniable case that Americans’ meaningful love deficit is destroying our capacity to thrive and innovate.
How about this simple reason instead?
Taking the
5 Love Languages
®
profile is FREE
and gives you “a thorough analysis of your emotional communication preference. It will single out your primary love language, what it means, and how you can use it to connect and deepen your relationships with others.”
When it comes to employee engagement, what are we really after? Connection. Relationship. Communication. Appreciation. Being understood. Creating an environment in which employees feel empowered to do and be their best.
I’m convinced that using each individual employee’s love language will help us close the love—and employee engagement—gap. What have you got to lose? Try learning and leading with love.
If I don’t say it often enough, I love you dear readers!
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